ConnexionStrength, Speed, and Super-Ventriloquism? The Strange Evolution of Superman's Powers
We’ve all heard the spiel about Superman before. He’s faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. In short, he’s one of the most powerful fictional characters ever conceived, able to break the laws of physics and bend time itself with impunity.
That said, Superman’s powers are nothing if not evolving. They’ve ebbed and flowed a lot over the decades, with the character evolving from super-strong defender of the downtrodden to all-powerful, godlike superhero to the more well-rounded character he is today. The only constant with Superman is his inconsistency.
With actor David Corenswet introducing moviegoers to the latest cinematic incarnation of the Man of Steel, let’s take a step back to examine how Superman’s powers have evolved and changed over the years, from the earliest Superman comics to the campy excesses of the Silver Age and right on into the modern era.
Superman’s Original Powers
When Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster originally created Superman for 1938’s Action Comics #1, they couldn’t have envisioned the scope his adventures would eventually take. Superman began life as a power fantasy for two obscure Jewish comic book creators. He had super-strength, but the kind that allowed him to bend steel bars and lift cars, not shatter mountains and hoist skyscrapers. In the beginning, Superman was more interested in battling corrupt landlords and mad scientists, and his powers were relatively grounded to match that level of antagonist. This early Superman also had a degree of invulnerability, but nowhere near the level he would display later.
Superman also had super-speed from day one, but notably, he didn’t have the power to fly yet. That’s where “able to leap tall buildings in a single bound” comes in. In his earliest appearances, Superman simply used his incredible strength to jump over obstacles, much like The Hulk does. It wasn’t until the Man of Steel spun out into a serialized radio drama that flight was introduced to his growing repertoire of powers.
In fact, a lot of elements we commonly associate with the character were introduced in the radio drama The Adventures of Superman and later adopted by the comics. That includes characters like Perry White and Jimmy Olsen. The radio drama is also where Superman first crossed paths with Batman and Robin.
Perhaps most importantly, The Adventures of Superman introduced Superman’s Achilles' heel in the form of Kryptonite. The inclusion of a mysterious mineral that saps Superman’s powers served a practical purpose, as it gave the writers excuses to temporarily remove Superman from the picture and give actor Bud Collyer a break from recording.
Superman may have been a relatively grounded character starting out, but it wasn’t long before Siegel, Shuster, and other creators began to embellish and expand his list of abilities. Over time, he gained powers like enhanced senses, X-ray and heat vision, and even goofier additions like the ability to rearrange his facial features or telepathically influence others.
This gradual evolution is captured in what is probably the most enduring Superman media from this era, the Fleischer Studios Superman animated shorts. The early Fleischer shorts depict Superman as leaping rather than flying, but that changes over time.
Superman’s Silver Age Excess
Superman’s popularity only continued to grow heading into the ‘50s and ‘60s, and so too did his list of powers. As the Silver Age of comics dawned, Superman became a truly larger-than-life figure with effectively godlike powers.
Superman’s super-strength alone increased to frankly ridiculous heights during this era. Whereas once the character showed off his muscles by lifting cars and tanks, in the Silver Age comics, Superman performed ever more impossible feats of strength and endurance. He became strong enough to move entire planets with his bare hands. His strength seems to have no upper limit in these comics, but merely adapts to meet the needs of any given story.
Superman’s super-speed also grew to fantastical heights during the Silver Age. It wasn’t uncommon for the Man of Steel to fly through the galaxy at faster-than-light speeds or vibrate his body into alternate dimensions. That said, he never grew quite fast enough to definitively beat The Flash in a race.
This was also the period when comic creators began to pay more attention to where Superman’s powers come from in the first place. Where the early Superman comics simply justified his strength as a byproduct of his superior Kryptonian physiology, the Silver Age comics introduced the idea that Superman and his fellow Kryptonians absorb yellow solar radiation like living batteries. Combine that with Earth’s lower levels of gravity, and you have the recipe for an all-powerful superhero.
Beyond strength and speed, DC creators added all manner of entirely new powers to the roster. Superman first displayed his Super-Breath during this period, allowing him to freeze enemies in ice or survive in the cold vacuum of space. He developed a genius-level intellect and perfect memory. And that’s to say nothing of the many bizarre and ridiculous powers that would often crop up for a single issue or two and never be mentioned again. That includes Super-Ventriloquism, Super-Hypnotism, and the downright incredible ability to shoot a miniature Superman clone from the palm of his hand. Whatever DC’s writers and artists could imagine, Superman could accomplish.
Given the enormous scope of his abilities in the Silver Age, it’s probably just as well that Kryptonite also got a major glow-up to help bring the Man of Steel back to Earth. The Superman comics introduced countless, multicolored variants of the traditional Green Kryptonite. Red Kryptonite caused a variety of different effects, like spawning a Superman doppelganger or turning him into a dragon. Gold Kryptonite drained his powers permanently. Blue Kryptonite only worked on his backwards doppelganger Bizarro. For every new power Superman gained, it was matched by a new variant of Kryptonite.
The influence of these campier Superman comics can be clearly felt in the live-action movies starring Christopher Reeve. Reeve’s Superman has no shortage of ridiculous powers of his own. In the first film, we see him reverse Earth’s rotation and turn the clock back to undo Lois Lane’s death (never mind the devastating real-world effects this act would unleash, like tsunamis and earthquakes).
Superman II takes things up several notches when Reeves’ Kal-El battles Terence Stamp’s General Zod and crew in the Fortress of Solitude. We see Supes deploy his S emblem as some sort of weird cellophane trap. Then all four Kryptonians blast light from their palms and take turns becoming invisible, at which point Superman responds by summoning mirages of himself. Finally, Superman caps things off by wiping Lois’ memory with a kiss.
In Superman III, we encounter the live-action incarnation of Red Kryptonite when Clark turns evil and then battles himself in a garbage dump (though the jury is still out as to whether that fight actually happened or was all a metaphor for his inner turmoil). We also see Superman crush a lump of coal into a perfectly cut diamond. We’ll believe a man can fly, and do a bunch of other weird stuff for good measure.
Bringing Superman Back Down to Earth
DC wasn’t necessarily doing much to counter the criticism that Superman is too powerful to be a compelling character. But by the time the ‘70s rolled around, the publisher finally decided it was time to rein things in a bit.
DC’s first attempt at de-powering Superman came in 1971’s Superman #233, in a story dubbed “Kryptonite Nevermore.” That issue sees Superman caught in an explosion from a Kryptonite-fueled power plant, causing his strength to be cut in half. On the bright side, that same explosion also renders all the Kryptonite on Earth inert, sparing the Man of Steel from his greatest weakness even as it robbed him of some of his power.
That early attempt didn’t fully take, however, and Superman gradually returned to his overpowered self. But DC made a more concerted effort to tone things down when it handed the reins of the franchise to writer/artist John Byrne in 1987. At the time, DC was using the fallout of Crisis on Infinite Earths as an excuse to reboot a number of popular heroes and attempt to streamline its vast, decades-old continuity. Byrne was tasked with giving Kal-El his most detailed origin story to date in Superman: Man of Steel.
Byrne’s Superman proved to be a far cry from the godlike yet goofy hero of the Silver Age. Byrne placed new limits on Superman’s abilities while also seeking to find plausible explanations for some of Kal-El’s more outlandish feats. For example, Byrne established the concept of tactile telekinesis to explain how Superman can lift large objects like buildings without them breaking apart. He also depicted Superman as generating an invisible force field around his body, explaining why his skintight uniform never seems to get damaged.
DC’s reference books placed hard limits on Superman’s strength, indicating he can lift upwards of 100 tons. So much for moving planets. His speed and intelligence were also scaled back considerably, the latter of which helped make the intellectually superior Lex Luthor (who himself was reimagined as a ruthless business tycoon rather than a mad scientist) a more foreboding opponent for the Man of Steel.
Byrne’s Superman comics seemed to do the trick, appealing to readers eager for a more grounded and human take on the character. That said, other fans criticized this newfound insistence on finding pseudo-scientific explanations for Superman’s powers. How much realism do we really need in our kid-friendly fantasy stories?
All-Star Superman writer Grant Morrison put it best when he told Rolling Stone, “Kids understand that real crabs don't sing like the ones in The Little Mermaid. But you give an adult fiction, and the adult starts asking really f***ing dumb questions like `How does Superman fly? How do those eyebeams work? Who pumps the Batmobile's tires?' it's a f***ing made-up story, you idiot! Nobody pumps the tires!"
Morrison was among a number of creators who sought to restore some of Superman’s mythic grandeur in the late ‘90s and ‘00s. The Byrne-era emphasis on realism has since mostly fallen out of favor, though Superman generally still isn’t portrayed as quite the powerhouse he was in his Silver Age days. How strong is Superman now? Exactly as strong as the story needs him to be. No more, no less.
DC has also toyed with introducing some radical new powers into Superman’s repertoire. The character went through an infamous phase in 1998 when he was split into separate red and blue versions of himself and gained electric powers. That shake-up didn’t last long. Nor did Superman’s short-lived solar flare power introduced as part of DC’s New 52 reboot. That power allowed Clark to unleash all of his body’s pent-up solar energy in one massive blast, rendering him temporarily powerless afterward.
The modern, post-Byrne philosophy toward Superman also influenced the character’s depiction in Superman: The Animated Series and other DC Animated Universe shows. That Superman is notably weaker than many versions that have appeared before or since. Like Byrne’s Superman, his feats of strength are toned down, and he’s more vulnerable in battle fighting villains like Parasite and Livewire. Some DC fans actually took issue with this take on the Man of Steel, complaining that he was too weak and de-powered. That said, the series finale of Justice League Unlimited suggests that this Superman was always holding back his true strength for the sake of living in “a world of cardboard.” Only at the end does Darkseid bear witness to Superman’s full, unrestrained might.
Be sure to check out our IGN Inside Stories documentary on Justice League to learn more about the Superman controversy:
Similarly, the live-action series Smallville gave us a more grounded take on the character. Tom Welling’s Clark Kent starts out as a teenager still coming to terms with his nascent super-powers, and only over the course of 10 seasons does he fully master his abilities and evolve into a proper Superman in the series finale.
Where Does James Gunn’s Superman Fit In?
With the DCEU gone, and with it Henry Cavill’s Superman, we’re meeting a brand new cinematic incarnation of Kal-El played by David Corenswet. So where does Corenswet’s Superman fit in? Is he the all-powerful Superman of the Silver Age comics, or a relatively more grounded, modern interpretation of the character?
All signs point to the latter. We certainly see Superman performing some impressive feats in the trailer, battling kaiju and shielding innocent bystanders from debris. But the trailers also emphasize Superman’s vulnerability. The original teaser opens with a scene of a bleeding and badly injured Superman crashing into the snow and wheezing, forced to call his faithful pup Krypto to bail him out. Whatever enemy put Superman through the wringer here, it’s clear he’s got his work cut out for him in preserving Truth, Justice, and a Better Tomorrow.
Gunn has made it clear this is all very intentional. He wants a version of the Man of Steel who can be vulnerable and isn’t always the most powerful guy in the room. Gunn revealed in an interview with Rolling Stone that he wants “a Superman that can be beat” and who audiences can empathize with as a result.
"I wanted Superman to be vulnerable,” Gunn said. “I see the online things 'Who would beat whom?' — Homelander or Superman or f***ing whatever, Adam Warlock or Brightburn, and I’m like, 'This is the f***ing stupidest f***ing conversation.' Like, so then whoever would win this fight means that they’re the best? Because I’ll just go out and write God Man, who can destroy you with a wink. And I win. I win all the fights forever… Honestly, in talking to people, a lot of people are like, 'I like Batman better because he can actually be beat,' and I get that. So we have a Superman that can be beat.”
Corenswet’s Superman can bleed. He can be beaten. But that just makes it all the more satisfying when he digs deep and saves the day anyway. Ultimately, that’s Superman’s true power, and one that’s existed since his earliest adventures. No matter the challenge, Superman has the strength and the courage to overcome.
What’s your preferred take on Superman? Do you want one who can move planets and travel at lightspeed, or does the Man of Steel need to be a little more grounded and vulnerable? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
For more on Superman, find out why Gunn is "giving up everything in my life and soul" to make the movie, and brush up on every DC movie and series in development.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.
